Future Students:

2005

Marjory Wentworth, the poet laureate of South Carolina, will give a public reading at Francis Marion University, March 22.

The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Hyman Fine Arts Center’s Kassab Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Wentworth will speak to FMU classes the following day.

Wentworth was born in Lynn, Mass. Educated at Mount Holyoke College and Oxford University, she received her M.A. in English literature and creative writing from New York University. Her poems have appeared in numerous books and magazines, and she has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Nightjars, a chapbook of her poems, was published by Laurel Publishing in 1995. Her poems have been published with Mary Edna Fraser’s art in a book of poetry and monotype prints, What the Water Gives Me. Noticing Eden, a collection of poems, was published by Hub City Press in October 2003. She was appointed poet laureate of South Carolina in 2003.

She teaches poetry in “Expressions of Healing” – an arts and healing program for cancer patients and their families at Roper Hospital in Charleston. She also teaches a literature and medicine course funded by the Humanities Council of South Carolina at M.U.S.C. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Southern Literature Council of Charleston and lives in Mt. Pleasant with her husband Peter and their three sons.

“We are excited that Marjory will be on our campus and meeting with our students,” said Beckie Flannagan, FMU associate professor of English. “She is an enormous talent and an engaging speaker.”

The speech is presented by the Jones Thomas and Carolyn Stroman Hunter Chair in English Literature at FMU. The Hunter Chair in English Literature was established in 1991 by three sisters – Dorothy Hunter Thames Ellis, Adelle Hunter West and Hattie Costa Hunter King – as a memorial to their parents, Jones Thomas and Carolyn Stroman Hunter.

Mr. Hunter made his life in Marion County, was once mayor of Marion, contributed to many different organizations throughout the Pee Dee area, and operated a successful automobile dealership in Florence for 40 years. Mrs. Hunter came to Marion as a schoolteacher, was active in church work and taught Sunday School for more than 50 years. She was a charter member of several literary clubs, garden clubs and community organizations.